It seems like just yesterday the Secret Service was pretty much unanimously associated with saving the day, but now the agency is finding that when it rains bad news, it pours. First came the prostitution scandal in Colombia, perhaps the first-ever challenge to our general idea that Secret Service members are totally selfless heroes. Then came the unfortunate news that they might have yet another prostitution scandal on their hands, this time in El Salvador. And now a Secret Service agent has run over an innocent woman crossing the street in Brooklyn and killed her.

It seems that Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano spoke too soon when she told lawmakers…
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Maria Tripp, a 47-year-old custodian for the parks department, was walking in Brownsville, Brooklyn, with her 12-year-old daughter, her 19-year-old nephew, and her boyfriend when she was struck by a car yesterday afternoon. The Secret Service agent who was driving the vehicle was on duty (but wasn't part of a security detail), and he apparently had the green light. The exact circumstances of what happened are still under investigation, but for whatever reason he hit Ms. Tripp, causing her to fly up into the air and land on her head. She was pronounced dead at the hospital a short time later. Tripp has five daughters and is also a grandmother. She was described as a "beautiful person." So sad. While this appears to be nothing more than a tragic accident, the timing of such a public and horrible incident could not be worse for the Secret Service, which at this point must be getting desperate to prove that we don't have a bunch of irresponsible people guarding our nation's most important officials.